The Best American Poetry 1996 [Hardcover]

Adrienne Rich (Editor), David Lehman (Editor)

Book Description

Series: Best American Poetry | Publication Date: September 16, 1996

The ninth anthology in an award-winning series, a diverse collection of the seventy-five best poems of 1995, culled from more than forty literary journals, includes the work of African-Americans, Native Americans, Hispanics, gays, and women. 40,000 first printing.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Adrienne Rich proves to be the most inclusive editor thus far in the Best American Poetry series, drawing from a number of writers and journals whose work had not been represented in earlier installments. Of course, established poets such as Alicia Ostriker and W.S. Merwin are present, alongside newcomers like Ray A. Young Bear and Latif Asad Abdullah. The poems range from the funny (Beth Ann Fennelly's unrhymed sonnet), to the sexy (Deborah Stein's steamy contribution), to the poignant (a posthumous inclusion from Jane Kenyon). --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Rich has amassed a far-flung group to represent her view of America. These poets were born in Jamaica, China, Mexico, South Africa, Canada, Hawaii and the mainland. There are professors and prisoners, a medical student and a jazz critic. Rich embraces both the bilingual and the long poem, but what is truly startling is how little these poets say of joy and how much of suffering. It is a heavy read. Alicia Ostriker writes of the Holocaust, Wang Ping of the deaths of Chinese stowaways, Gary Soto of the destitute. There are three poets born after 1975, testing human experience and response: Deborah Stein, Quentin Rowan and Natasha Le Bel ("my born body new and/ gravid with musical sensuality"). And four poets who passed away last year haunt the anthology with meditations on death: William Dickey, Jane Kenyon, James Merrill and Jean Starr ("I have felt each living link begin to wither"). David Lehman is the series editor.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Scribner; 1996 edition (September 16, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684814552
• ISBN-13: 978-0684814551
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,657,294 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Execrable, March 31, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Best American Poetry 1996 (Paperback)

I was excited when I bought this book, since I had already read Best American Poetry, 1996 and 1993 and thought they were wonderful. After I read the first poem ("The Tomb", by Latif Asad Abdullah) my heart sank. Simply being on death row does not mean your poetry should be published in a best-of anthology for the whole year, and his poem was terrible. There are a couple of strong poems here and there in the book, but you have to wade through a huge amount of garbage (something a Best-of anthology is supposed to save you doing, by the way). I'm all for shaking up the literary scene, and I thought that BAP 1996, where the editor Richard Howard excluded all poets who'd been anthologized more than three times, was very strong. But including terrible poems simply because they express a minority point of view perpetuates all the bad stereotypes that anything diverse must necessarily be of poor quality. I hope the 1998 anthology will be better, but I no longer trust the "Best of American Poetry" brand name enough to order it without having browsed through it in a bookstore. I know that there was wonderful writing published in America in 1996. Unfortunately none of it is in here.

8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Adrienne Rich has gone soft, January 25, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (NY, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Best American Poetry 1996 (Paperback)

Rich has gone soft! She cares more for causes, race and gender of the authors than she does for quality. There are about 3 and a half strong poems in the collection, which is the worst edition of Best American Poetry by far.

12 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars What?, November 7, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Best American Poetry 1996 (Hardcover)

It seems that the people who rated this book highly didn't actually like it all that much, but they felt that it 'struck a blow' agaist 'white male publishers.' Hello! This is almost the 21st Century. The blows have been struck! Women can vote! So can African Americans! If all you can say about the book was that it went against what white males considered good poetry, that doesn't mean it's worth reading!